


muscle to muscle and toe to toe

by karennninas



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Codependency, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt Spencer Reid, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Jennifer "JJ" Jareau, Sad Spencer Reid, Unhealthy Relationships, and, but life is cold and hard and I love you isnt the end all be all and I wanted to express that, but this is more JJ perspective I think, implied/referenced eating disorder, is it possible to tag codependency like ten more times bc, not rly Reid centric but still, super dark and like upsetting but like ooo did someone say toxic relationship, theres also such deep love and there can be happiness even in the most brutal parts, wow these tags are just a barrel of sunshine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:00:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24506542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karennninas/pseuds/karennninas
Summary: they’re laying in bed and she asks,“which of us do you think is going to die first?”
Relationships: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau & Spencer Reid, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Spencer Reid
Comments: 11
Kudos: 72





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is like dark and sad it just felt like. the authentic take on the situation? if that makes sense. maybe i just b projecting onto everyone all the time bc Im The Main Character but like anyways heres the canon div. codependent established relationship that literally no one asked for :^)

she wonders when they grew up. 

she wonders, because it wasn’t always like this. there was a time before, but it feels like a dream. like the memory of a dream, fading further and further into nothing but a vague sensation. she’s barely a ghost of the person from that dream, now. 

she remembers the day he first got his three-month chip. lifetimes have passed. he’d stared at the floor when she asked where he’d been, why he’d disappeared from an hour of work, and she’d grabbed his hand, silently begging him not to make her ask the question they both _knew_ she had to ask— 

“90 days is green,” and he’d pressed the plastic medallion into her palm and closed her fingers over it. she kissed him for the first time right then, between the elevator and the bullpen, and her heart had soared. when his first relapse came (14 days later), she told him that she loved him, and that they had nowhere to go but up. 

maybe it wasn’t better, years ago. maybe it was just easier to pretend. maybe time had just weakened them. weakened her. it still didn’t use to be like this.

she misses the girl who had enough room in her heart to be affected by the little things. the girl who cried when strangers cried, who closed her eyes at gruesome photos and winced at the sight of blood. who had the energy to feel _and_ to react, instead of having to choose one.

she knows that he’s using, and he knows that she knows. maybe, before, she would have done more. she _could_ have done more. in the early aughts, she had. she’d taken him to treatment, to meetings, she’d gone to everyone who’d listen and begged for help. now she can only bring herself to lay with him on the couch in helpless, exhausted, guilty silence, and hold him. she feels his heartbeat, slow and faint and just as tired as she is. 

her hair is falling out. her eyes are haloed in deep blue-violet, more pronounced than they have been. he notices, of course he notices, and he cares, but he doesn’t mention it. she’s not the only one who’s lost the same fight over and over. they exist in mutual guilt. 

he calls himself a functional addict. for the most part, he _is_ functional. he drives, does his job, showers, sleeps. sometimes he cooks for her. she knows that it’s his way of pleading, apologizing, trying to bandage bullet-holes. she loves him for it, and she tries every time. when she empties her plate into the garbage, she can feel his heart dropping to his stomach. every time. she tells him that she’s functional too.

he still tries to hide it a little, even though she knows, even though they’ve acknowledged it,

(twice, in passing, with a shared understanding that there would be no real confrontation because they would each rather die than be at odds with the other,) 

he gives excuses for ducking into another room, offering a mercy that she accepts gratefully. she can pretend, for a few minutes, that it’s the truth. a few breaths of relief, as if their apartment isn’t littered with the evidence and as if she can’t hear every sound through the thin walls. she can convince herself, for 30 or 40 seconds, that he isn’t dying, and that she isn’t complicit. it’s over as soon as it begins. 

functional. for the most part. 

she finds him on their bedroom floor. not choking, not shaking or convulsing or foaming at the mouth. he’s just slumped over in the corner, completely still. limp. he looks dead. she thought he was dead. she isn’t even the one to call 911; it’s their neighbor who heard her scream. 

(not really a scream, but kind of a choking wail that comes from the pit of her stomach and rips her breath right out of her lungs,)

she watches paramedics wheel her boyfriend out of their apartment on a gurney. one of them, a woman, guides her to the door, tells her she can ride with them on the ambulance, asks if there’s anyone she should call. JJ shakes her head.

“No, it’s just me and him.”

she comes into work with an hour of sleep and a stomach full of burnt coffee from the hospital. she’s bombarded with questions based in empathy and concern, but she’s so goddamn tired she walks right past her coworkers, her friends, right into her office.

she cries in painful, dry sobs that don’t make a sound but tear through her chest and burn in her throat, and she doesn’t even notice her boss enter the room till she hears the door close behind him. 

“So Reid’s in the hospital?” he already knows that; she actually had called last night, to secure Spencer’s sick days. she didn’t say why or what happened. she couldn’t. 

“Yeah, for a couple of days. They said at least a week, so.” she’s closed off, guarded. staring at the wall behind Hotch, angry, as if she had the energy to spare. 

“What happened?” but he already knows. they all know. they just don’t say anything. 

she looks him in the eye. “Blood sugar drop. Nothing serious, but he needs treatment.” _treatment_. detox and come home. 

he takes a step toward her and she backs up. when he asks if she’s eaten, she lies, and he knows that too. he’s looking at her (hollowed cheeks covered with blush, as if that would make her look more alive) with a kind, desperate concern that she rarely sees in him, reserved for the worst moments of the worst. he’s looking at her, hoping, pleading, _trust me with something._

“If there was a different story and I told you, he’d lose his job.” her voice is flat and her face is expressionless, but she doesn’t need to use either for him to feel the exhausted resentment coming off of her in waves. she wants to tell him, really. she wants not to be so completely alone in this, so _solely responsible_ for _everything_ that goes wrong, as if by loving Spencer she’d doomed herself to watch him die, alone, to _let_ him, and to die alone after. follow him to total self-destruction in an effort to spend one more second together. she wants not to be alone. 

“I care very much for—”

“Hotch, please, don’t say that to me right now.” she doesn’t have the energy to yell or cry, to express anything besides a low, shaking voice. 

before he walks out the door, he pauses. “How bad was it?” 

he’s suffering. she can see it. she grants him this one truth, barely audible so they can pretend she hadn’t: “The paramedics said if I found him ten minutes later, he’d have been dead.” she can see it now: see him collapsed on the floor, their bedroom floor, with blue lips and cracked skin. cold, alone, and not breathing. just ten minutes. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Me too.” 

they’re laying in bed a week after he comes home and she’s examining him in the dark. not in some sweet-soft romanticized comforting _tracing her fingers_ type of way; they’re beyond that, beyond hiding from reality behind mild and muted gestures. she’s holding his hand, touching every square inch of his arm up and down for her own morbid curiosity; the sickening sense of voyeurism that follows addiction and stays like a cloud, stagnant, anchoring that evil plea of _let me see let me see let me see._

there’s nothing comforting about the sensation. his skin is scabbed over on his wrist, marred and bruised _all over_ his forearm, mangled on the back of his hand. she remembers some of them: a few pronounced and angular that came from a razor-blade or a pocketknife, preceded by a shameful and panic-stricken depressive episode and driven by some inescapable need to remove, at least render unrecognizable, months’ worth of 26-gauge evidence. blotchy circular scars commemorate benders or binges that inevitably wrought infection on an overused spot. sides of the wrist, crevice between the thumb and index finger; she presses her finger over each one, inviting every mark to provide her with physical documentation of its specific nauseating memory. or worse, to raise the gnawing questions, _when, how, where, why, why, why,_

_(what did it feel like)_

when they fuck, it’s like two skeletons trying to kill each other. she tells him that one night, when they’re laying together and she’s warm (fucking finally, _warm_ ) in his arms and he’s pressed his face in her hair. he laughs because it’s true; they’re both just skin and bones, barely held together, but there’s a twinge of guilt in his stomach and he doesn’t know if she put it there on purpose. still, it’s part of their shared secret. the bruises on their hipbones, her thighs, his back, neck; complementary marks that bond them together more fiercely than any rings or vows. 

he’s been back for eight weeks when her period stops. she tells him that she’s late and they pretend, just for the evening, that it could be because of a baby, and not because her body shutting down, sending her organs to a screeching halt. 

she takes a pregnancy test in the morning. just to make sure. _as if this body could take care of a baby_.he’s with her: he sits on the edge of the bathtub, stares at his hands, and neither of them can speak so they just listen to the empty apartment (creaking walls groaning pipes buzzing lights windows that vibrate with the cars outside-) and wait. 

in the end, they don’t talk about it. he knows well enough not to start a fight or force an ultimatum; they’ve had that conversation before. she’s called every bluff ten times over. (yelling and crying and plates shattering on the floor and _Jesus, Spencer, this morning you were asleep in your own vomit and_ I _need to get_ my _shit together-_ ) they’re out of lies to tell. they’re out of ways to hurt each other. 

they’re still sitting in the bathroom and he tells her that he loves her. she’s silent, mourning the fantasy that had died with the tiny blue negative sign in front of her. fantasy: she will grow warm and round and nurturing, he will stay sober for the rest of their lives, they’ll have a family, be a family, and she will never cry again. reality is colder and sharper— she’s crying now, and she will for another three hours. she’ll sink to the bathroom floor and he’ll follow and they’ll stay there until she can breathe again. 

reality is evil. it’s that he hasn’t been sober for eleven days and she just doesn’t know it yet. he’s praying she won’t ever notice, because when she does he’ll see a part of her, something behind her eyes, wither up and fade away. he’s seen it more times than he ever dreamed he would. he’s chipping away at her, at the _force_ behind her eyes, and replacing it bit by bit with exhaustion and vacancy. reality is that one day he’ll have uprooted her completely, clinging to a sapling in a tornado. he’s tearing her out of warm earth and soft grass and damning her to be mangled by a storm that could have, maybe, just passed her by without a scratch. maybe. 

(reality is that, in all likelihood, the damage sustained to her reproductive system by malnutrition is effectively beyond repair, and she knows it, and she feels sick knowing she’ll never give him _life_ ; she’ll only shrink and watch him shrink and they’ll wither up all cold and gray because _she let them she let him she couldn’t give him the lifeline he needed_ —)

that night, they’re laying in bed and she asks, 

“which of us do you think is going to die first?” 

she’s expecting loaded silence. she’s expecting the air in the room to get hot with guilt and regret and for him to say nothing and pretend to sleep. but he doesn’t. he pulls her closer, just barely, and says very very softly, “Jay, you’re going to live to a hundred and twenty,” and for some reason, she bursts into tears right then and there. 


	2. but here i go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is the beginning. they rile each other up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi idk what this really is ive jus been thinking a lot abt it and prolly kind of projecting my own bullshit hahahha 
> 
> timelines are weird and do not exist,, . this is definitely before the events in the first ''''chapter'' though, it's the beginning and/or first half/section/idk like era of the relationship. 
> 
> pls look past my grammar im srry i rly do b living that comma life
> 
> if u vibe pls lmk

“it doesn’t need stitches.” 

she is delicately perched in his lap, tending to his face with trembling fingers and a lightness of touch that almost feels ridiculous, given that the apartment is still ringing with the sounds of their raised voices, sharp with betrayal and accusation,

(and of the dull and echoing plastic _crash_ of a laxative bottle colliding with the refrigerator, scattering the floor with a thousand tiny pills, and of the retaliatory _can_ - _opener_ that ricocheted across the living room) 

quietly, he repeats himself, “Jay, it doesn’t need stitches.” he is trying to comfort her. 

shaking fingers pause on his forehead and slide down to cup his jaw. the intimacy is ironic but it’s so _genuine;_ he relents, closes his eyes and lets her continue to clean and tape the curved gash by his hairline. 

(she wasn’t aiming for his head, she swears to god and to _anything_ else; it was the adrenaline and she couldn’t see through the fucking _tears_ in her eyes and she was so tired, so frustrated, and as soon as it left her hand her heart dropped to her stomach and her breath left her body and she ran to him _so fast,_ )

her throat is raw from from shouting and crying. she forces it anyways. her penance. an admission. “I could’ve taken your eye out.” 

Spencer swallows abruptly and shakes his head. “Nah, look at me; I barely felt it,” he starts, but she shudders and pulls her hand away because her face is twisting up into a sob, and he has to grab her arm to bring her back, “No— Jennifer, look at my eyes.” Pin-prick pupils. she was right all along. “I barely felt it.” 

genuine.

-

this is the beginning. they rile each other up.

they're young and in love. it’s passionate and chaotic and volatile because that’s who they are; they’re _energy._ and maybe it’s unhealthy and it’s doomed, but that’s fine, they don’t _care_ — how could _anyone_ give this up? after going so long without it? 

her vibrance is near-infectious. it radiates, following her from room to room, and every space is filled with the colors of her joy. from the first day they kissed, she’s walked on air; beaming, laughing, _singing_. she spends her every second loving him, and loving him is feeling _alive_. and she deserves that. she deserves to feel alive. 

their movements become fluid, impossibly connected and with ease. they’re forceful, together, because they are two very intense people, and infatuation only adds to intensity. the way that they walk, talk; every interaction loses a degree of subtlety and gains that _force_ behind it, that barely-contained electricity. threatening to overload at any moment and kill everything it can touch, but still so bright and so beautiful. she stands in an office doorway and he wraps an arm around her neck, and his sudden weight sways her, but she moves with him and returns his grin twofold. they fool around in a bar bathroom, and she clutches the back of his head and _yanks_ on his hair, and he follows her hand. they’re so violently in love with each other, it seeps into everything. they melt into each other completely and without regard to consequence. 

-

she isn’t stupid. later, 

(crouching over an all-but-lifeless body, uncovering a new _stash_ after he swore he was done, asking for naloxone from the same pharmacist who had sold her a hypodermic syringe just six days prior, cleaning up piss and vomit and shit and praying and swearing to god that _this_ is the last time), 

JJ will have to remind herself of that: trust is not stupidity. there are some things which can only be learned through experience. trust is almost, almost, almost never a weakness. 

there’s a vague memory of a stand-up act in a bar, braying an old line into the mike, _“how do you know when an addict is lying? - he opens his mouth.”_ naïveté, that ultimate privilege, shrivels up and goes to die. it isn’t funny.

she is not stupid, so of course she notices when he acts differently. when his mood turns in a hairpin and takes her flying with it. but it can be so good, so _fun_ , that she’s swept up by the thought, _okay, maybe we’re just happy_. she allows herself this indulgence: to lean into it. this is still the before. she does not know, not yet, that the price of her joy is impossibly steep. she learns it soon enough (brutally, disgustingly, so painfully soon) and once she does, she never, ever, lets herself forget. but this is the before:

she drinks a glass of white at Rossi’s and lets Spencer whirl her around the living room, in front of their coworkers, and dip her ( _fling_ her) almost to the floor and kiss her on the mouth, _in front of their coworkers—_ and she enjoys it! the decadence, the adrenaline, the passion; she nearly _matches_ it. she soars with him. his face is full and flushed, and he looks at her with this burning reverence that silences everything else for miles, everything but her. he is hers and she feels so warm. they’re in love. 

-

she is not stupid. she notices the crashing. the patterns. sleeping through afternoons, that strange little lilt in his voice, a dazed smile beneath heavy eyes. she sees it. 

he swears up and down that he’s clean, and the first few times, she really does believe him. _trust is not stupidity_. he gives (excuses) explanations, and truly, they make sense. _“I’m choosing to trust you_ ,” she tells him. _“I love you, and I’m giving you all of my trust.”_ he tells her he loves her too. 

when he’s finally honest, she shouts. she really does. she’s holding an at-home drug test in her hand, an ultimatum, and she throws it on the floor harder than he thought she was capable. the plastic cup shatters in its unopened package. he flinches. she shouts and cries, loud and brash and crude, _(hurt)_ , and through the whole thing, he just sits and listens, tears on his face mirroring hers. she is the cruelest she has ever been, will ever be, and he takes it. 

it’s the first and the last time she’ll yell without him fighting back. 

when she’s done— sunken to the floor, breathless and exhausted of tears— he kneels next to her and holds her in his arms. she heaves dry sobs into his chest and does not hear his prayers, mouthed against the crown of her head. he prays never to hurt her again. he prays for the strength to stop. he does not know that this is barely the beginning.

in retrospect, this one night could be dated as the turning point, for them. the point of no return, their fate sealed: they won’t leave each other, no matter what happens. they’ve ensured it, melting themselves down over and over until separation is physically impossible. every piece of him that she tears apart and breaks, he does to her. she hates herself as she hates him, and he, her. they blame themselves for each other. and they will not (cannot) ever stop loving each other. a death sentence. 

Spencer comes home from his first 10-day detox with a silver chip, a pleading, guilty apology, and a promise that things will be better. he comes home to an apartment that’s been stripped, for the first time but far from the last, of the heroin and the needles and the syringes. every wall, every tile, countertop, and table scrubbed clean, air vents wiped and emptied, lightbulbs replaced. she wanted to move forward. move him forward.

he kisses her palm, tentative and gentle, and she falls into his arms. she tells him, a warm murmur to the base of his neck, that they can put everything behind them, now. she will not let her optimism die, not now; he _needs_ her. _she can_ _fix this_. 

she has to force him into detox twice more before the year ends.

-

a contemplation aloud: “You said that _‘only stupid people OD’_.” she is lying open on their couch so he can lean into her. this is what she is for him, always. open. to catch what he cannot carry. open, so she can hold onto him with her whole body. her arms are wrapped around his torso and pull him impossibly closer every second, and her legs sit bent at his either side. his head rests back against her neck, eyes tired beyond belief yet refusing to close. her heart beats against his spine. 

her voice has no ice to it, no cold and detached steel, not yet. just a sharpness. to graze the skin, and to sting, but not pierce. 

he does not (cannot, will not) answer her. 

hours later, well into that night, he holds her close in their bed and apologizes very softly against her lips. she forgives him wordlessly; only pulls him to sit up and climbs onto his lap. this is the way they are, after his first overdose. quiet and tender and intimate, each acutely aware that they’re spending borrowed time. rocking together on a mattress at one in the morning, with folded elbows and gentle hands pressing his neck, enveloped in each other and trying, desperately, to live forever in one moment. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi so again i dk rly what this is it's just like. the most chaotic period in the relationship and the things and the EXPERIENCE that build up to the way things r in ch1. bc i feel like in real life everything is a function of everything else and u behave a certain way bc of a certain instance that influenced that behavior. and like it's so hard to communicate but like i want to rly express this evil kind of intersection that addiction forces, where u have to reconcile the aspects of self-infliction w powerlessness and like. addiction is this parasite on unconditional love that just slowly kills everyone involved and for some reason I Have to Write It


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